The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00I5UP99Y | Format: PDF
The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence Description
While the world has made encouraging strides in the fight against global poverty, there is a hidden crisis silently undermining our best efforts to help the poor.
It is a plague of everyday violence.
Beneath the surface of the world's poorest communities, common violence-like rape, forced labor, illegal detention, land theft, police abuse and other brutality-has become routine and relentless. And like a horde of locusts devouring everything in their path, the unchecked plague of violence ruins lives, blocks the road out of poverty, and undercuts development.
How has this plague of violence grown so ferocious? The answer is terrifying, and startlingly simple: There's nothing shielding the poor from violent people. In one of the most remarkable-and unremarked upon-social disasters of the last half century, basic public justice systems in the developing world have descended into a state of utter collapse.
Gary A. Haugen and Victor Boutros offer a searing account of how we got here-and what it will take to end the plague. Filled with vivid real-life stories and startling new data, The Locust Effect is a gripping journey into the streets and slums where fear is a daily reality for billions of the world's poorest, where safety is secured only for those with money, and where much of our well-intended aid is lost in the daily chaos of violence.
While their call to action is urgent, Haugen and Boutros provide hope, a real solution and an ambitious way forward. The Locust Effect is a wake-up call. Its massive implications will forever change the way we understand global poverty-and will help secure a safe path to prosperity for the global poor in the 21st century.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 12 hours and 28 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Brilliance Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: February 4, 2014
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00I5UP99Y
A plague of locusts can lay waste to anything and everything in its wake. "The Locust Effect" makes the compelling case that violence (common, everyday person-on-person violence) is laying waste to anything and everything for the poor in the developing world. Our efforts to feed the poor, educate the illiterate, uplift and empower girls and women, combat cultural prejudices, stimulate bruised economies, provide shelter for the homeless cannot and will not succeed unless we change the conversation and start to consider how deeply violence affects the very people we hope to help.
We would do well not to simply assume we know what the poor need. When asked, what the poor want most is not education, food, shelter or opportunity - they want to live in safety, without fear that the little they have and those they love could be decimated by evil-doers acting with impunity. They want justice: justice which HAS to come from public justice systems.
The thesis of the book is simple: the end of poverty requires the end of violence; and to end violence, countries need functioning public justice systems.
Haugen and Boutros carefully, academically, painstakingly and passionately argue that violence against the poor is both the biggest issue which the poor are facing, and also the single issue which the world at large has yet to address for human rights. They are clear in their probing as to how criminal justice systems got to be so bad, sober in their assessment of the task ahead, 100% convincing that this is the issue we HAVE to face head on if we are to seek justice for the billions of suffering people in our world.
The Locust Effect is not light reading. It doesn't have a silver bullet solution.
"The Locust Effect" articulates the missing link in the international vision to eradicate extreme global poverty. The missing link: effectively reducing the lawless violence that the poor face daily. It rips apart the lives of the impoverished and lays waste to all other anti-poverty efforts. Authors Gary Haugen and VIctor Boutros bring decades of first-hand experience walking alongside vulnerable peoples to this groundbreaking book on justice. They have repeatedly witnessed the gut-wrenching failures of law enforcement and courtrooms to protect and to represent our neediest global citizens.
"The Locust Effect" meets its goal to build a rigorous case that the elimination of everyday violence is now the most critical factor in the battle against poverty. The book effectively demonstrates how such common violence robs impoverished families of the ability to use the new schools, new medical clinics, and the new water wells. Access to these resources is essentially denied when violent perpetrators roam unhindered to rape, beat, and rob vulnerable members of the community.
Stories of real people in real crises open the book. We learn their names and their situations. Their brave willingness to share their stories allows the authors to put faces on the atrocities the poor face daily. Their stories re-surface throughout the book, along with new victims and new heroes in the fight against violence. But "The Locust Effect" is also full of hard facts.
Statistics and studies fill the middle chapters. Like stats? You will overdose here! Don't like stats: skim the middle chapters but pause to absorb the stories and summaries.
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